City of Screens

In <i>City of Screens</i> Jasmine Nadua Trice examines the politics of cinema circulation in early-2000s Manila. She traces Manila's cinema landscape by focusing on the primary locations of film exhibition and distribution: the pirated DVD district mall multiplexes art-house cinemas the university film institute and state-sponsored cinematheques. In the wake of digital media piracy and the decline of the local commercial film industry the rising independent cinema movement has been a site of contestation between filmmakers and the state each constructing different notions of a prospective national public film audience. Discourses around audiences become more salient given that films by independent Philippine filmmakers are seldom screened to domestic audiences despite their international success. <i>City of Screens</i> provides a deeper understanding of the debates about the competing roles of the film industry the public and the state in national culture in the Philippines and beyond.